A true story!

[landlocked]

One of the young folkes that I work with shared his first and only SCUBA experience with me last night. Sorry, it sort of left me with this blank experssion on my face and I couldn't think of anything to say so I thought maybe you could help me figure this out. Anyway, anyone want to read?

The young man is now about 20 years old. He related that as a senior in High School (17/18) he went to visist relatives on the pacific coast (State of Washington). The family he was visiting are totally into SCUBA as a family. His cousins all grew up SCUBA diving under the direction of their dad. At the time he had a 15 year old cousin who decided that he wanted to collect some crabs etc. for the supper table that night and invited my friend to come along. This was encouraged by his uncle who told him to go and have fun. There was another adult who had planned on going on the dive but after discovering that my friend was not a certified diver and would be diving wanted nothing to do with it and left. Anyway, having thus been encouraged, my friend, 17 years old, with no previous diving experience or instruction went diving. His 15 year old cousin taught him "everything he needed to know" in approximately 20 minutes of dry land instruction, helped him to get the gear on, and in the water they went. Just the two of them. The dive was an ocean dive in about 60 feet of water and lasted for approximately 40 minutes (my friends estimate.) No problems. They gathered several yummy things to eat and went home. My friend absolutely loved the experience and would like to take some insturction and become a diver. End of story. He seems to understand that the look on my face as he related this little tale was conected with my concern for his safety and readily admits that it was probably unsafe.

I am a little nonplused by the tale. I readily agree that a 17 year old youth in excellent health and fitness should have no problem with an "introductory dive" but with a 15 year old cousin as guide in 60 feet of ocean? Did the uncle have that much trust in his 15 year old son, or was/is he just stupid?!

Well, I'm glad to get that off MY chest. Any thoughts?

 

[Walter]

Unfortunately, your story is not unique.

 

[ScubyDoo]

Your friend was fortunate to walk away with his life, and his 15 year old cousin and Uncle should have known better. There are far too many cases of this type of "diving" going on. I have two family members who have never taken a course in diving who have gone diving with friends before.

Those without proper instruction are clueless as to the dangers involved, which is exactly why certified divers should know better than to encourage or even contribute to such dangerous actions.

This summer I plan to "tease" the same two individuals mentioned above by allowing them to breathe from a regulator in the shallow end of a swimming pool........but thats all. They will probably moan and groan about wanting to dive in the deep end, and thats when I will tell them to get certified first.

P.S. When I say "tease" above, its not to torture them, but to attempt to get them interested enough to take the OW course and get certified. I go on vacations with these people, and need dive buddies!!

 

[jbd]

Thats essentially how my youngest brother learned to dive. I'll spare the details as they have been mentioned before, but he suffered a lung overexpasion injury and some DCS symptoms but didn't know enough to go to the hospital. He's still diving occasionally but still isn't interested in getting certified.

 

[devilfish]

Nowadays of course the uncle was stupid.
The boy survived it, just like many who learned to dive before organized courses. Most kept diving to tell the tale, some did not.
As for 20 minute instruction. I'm afraid to say that many students today don't get more, in essence.
How much pool skill learning instruction does the average student get today.
One instructor, 10 students, 8 hours of pool time. That consists of 1/2 the time topside or on the surface which leaves only 4 hours uw. Since there is 10 students each gets only 10% of direct instruction/practice, the rest of the time they are sitting planted to the bottom waiting their turn blowing bubbles. 10% of 4 hours is what, 25 minutes. And that's it, they are ready to do their training dives in cold dark and scarry water.
Not all courses are like that, but there many, too many. And the industry wonders why there is such a dramatic drop out rate.

 

[Uncle Pug]

Originally posted by landlocked
Well, I'm glad to get that off MY chest. Any thoughts?

Thought one: ahh youth... immortal youth....
Thought two: resort course?
Thought three: that is truely scary!

 

[budgy]

My first dives were also without instruction. They were also solo. A friend had one small cylinder a back pack and a regulator and a weight belt, he didn't have a pressure gauge or depth gauge, no bcd . I had heard of but never seen any diver tables, but he said he'd been told that with a small tank like this you run out of air before you need a deco stop. Hey! if it gets difficult to breath then your running out air, so its time to come up and oh! Don't hold your breath. I don't think he'd had a lesson either, he wasn't much good at swiming, but then he grew up on the edge of the Kalahari. We each had a go in a swimming pool one afternoon then some weeks later we took turns to try it out in a local dam. The water was the colour of weak tea and if you touched the bottom you kicked up a cloud of black silt from mounds of rotting leaves. There must of been a fortune in old Fanta bottles lying on the bottom with sweet wrappers and old beer cans. Didn't seem any problem those days paying some other enthusiast 1 rand to fill up up the cylinder from a backyard compressor. The question of cylinder in test and diving certificate never seemed to come up.

 

[LilmanHSU]

I've done something similar like the person up above mentioned about "teasing" in the shallow end of the pool.

I went for a two tank beach dive that was scrubbed after the first, because of weather, so I had an extra rental tank at home that I already paid for. Why bother returning it full. So i grabbed my weight belt, tank and reg and headed over to the pool in my complex. Nice thing about it, is its not deep at all, deepest part is 5 ft. Lot of younger kids there. I would say 8-10 years old, maybe a couple a little older than that.. They thought it was really cool. breathing through a regulator. I would drop down to the bottom (ooo a whole 3 1/2 feet in the shallow)

They were having a blast crusing the bottoms.. They wanted to know how to do this for real, so I told them about how to get certified..

Who knows, maybe I sparked some interest for them when they get old enough to really learn..

Pauly

 

[devjr]

I see nothing unusual except for the displacement in time. I started with no instruction except a pampflet "Diving with the Aqualung". I was the 15 year old who taught 3 companions. We were greatly admired in our small town and made the newspaper as the only local owners and users of the Cousteau diving apparatus. No one questioned the safety or "legality". Rather, people stood back, scratched their head, and wondered how anybody could afford to buy one of those things; then, what underwater adventures these daring boys were destined to encounter. Two years before, Pop. Science had even run an article on how to build a complete SCUBA set including the regulator. No one questioned the wisdom of doing this. People had a right to do as free people do and lawsuits were rare, PS was perfectly safe in that regard.

It is probably hard to comprehend how America's culture has changed. People today think differently than those just a few decades ago. Where they were relatively poor, today's citizens can buy huge houses and two cars, and a load of SCUBA equipment accompanied by a certified tutor. The "silent generation" were accustomed to sacrifice, but also self reliance. They trusted in God and personal intitiative and would have been skeptical of many things, restrictive to freedom (and personal risk) which we today think of as normal.

 

[ebbtide]

it kinda reminded me of how i was interduced into scuba .
then after being certifyed i thaught holy ch*t what if this or that woulda happened ? whats an emergency accent ? buddie breath whats that . buddie where is my buddie ?
i guess thats y i dive today solo